Fluent Essays

EXAM QUESTIONS1.) Ronnie says race is skin color. Bobby says race is not real scientifically, so since it doesn’t exist, let’s stop talking about it. (a) Provide at least 2 examples of how race is socially constructed from your course readings/materials in your own words to show Bobby and Ronnie what race really is and is not. (b) What is correct & incorrect in each of Ronnie and Bobby’s statements (be specific)? (c) According to social science, what is the consequence when we “stop talking about race”—is it a good way to reduce racism? Why or why not? 2.) Mary feels we live in a post-racial society where anyone can be anything. The only people she sees bringing up race are people of color and she can’t understand why they just can’t get over it and see how the world is open to them. Is it true that racism does not affect white people unless they are bigots? Are people of color the only ones still thinking racially? Please provide some solid evidence in your own words from your course readings/materials about how racism still impacts society. What does the evidence (be specific—not just “racism still exists”) tell us about who is and is not racist, how many people are and are not racist (or prejudiced) today? (Hint: it might be helpful to distinguish between prejudice & racism, as well as between active & passive racism, in your answer.) 3.) Racial ideology today is often transmitted through colorblind discourse. Bonilla-Silva identifies 4 frames, 4 storylines, and 4 rhetorical strategies/semantic moves of colorblind racism. Create a fictitious conversation between “Jack” and “Jill” as they discuss a TV show they have just finished watching depicting a black single mother trying to keep her kid from a life of crime. Remember, Jack and Jill aren’t blatant racists and see themselves as open-minded. Make sure Jack and Jill use at least 1 frame, 1 storyline, and 1 rhetorical/semantic move each, and identify it when they do with parentheses. Do not plagiarize any examples from readings, make up your own. The 3 questions need to be 250-400 words each.An extra tidbit that the professor wrote in the moduleFour central frames of Color-Blind Racism:Abstract liberalismNaturalization’Cultural racismMinimization of racismAbstract Liberalism most important as a foundational base for ‘new racism’… must understand ‘liberalism’Tenants of liberalismIndividualism’Universalism’EgalitarianismMelorialism (idea that people and institutions can be improved)Often set in a Eurocentric framework of humanity (only Europeans are human)…modernity, liberalism, and racial exclusion developed together…however, liberalism has also been responsible for social change and reform (can be progressive)The four frames: Used in combination rather than a single frame“..abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political liberalism (e.g. “equal opportunity”, the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy) and economic liberalism (e.g. choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters”“laissez-faire racism” or “competitive racism” …. use in arguments against Affirmative actionOften used as an argument against assistance (welfare)Relies on Jeffersonian idea “the cream rises to the top” or meritocracy (reward by merit)Liberalism suggests little or no government interference (invisible hand of the market) …balance or equilibrium is usually the outcomeIndividualism…should not look at groups but individuals…individuals have a right to choose their attitudes and behaviors“Naturalization is a frame that allows whites to explain away racial phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences”Least used frame (tends to remind one of biological explanations)Uses ‘natural’ explanations…likes attract likesVery few natural occurrences in societyWe are generally socialized into our behaviors“Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as “Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education” or “blacks have too many babies” to explain the standing of minorities in society.”Tend to use cultural explanations for racial differencesAssumes culture is a fixed rather than fluid conceptExample “culture of poverty” used for the underclassOften used in conjunction with minimization“Just the way people are” explanation…part of their cultural traits i.e. laziness, frugalitySometimes harsh/direct criticism, other times compassionate/gentle approach“Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances (“It’s better now than in the past’ or “There is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there”)William Julius Wilson The Declining Significance of Race (1978) suggest class standing more important than raceDiscrimination not seen as a problem even though it may occurBelief that institutional racism has declinedRace is minimized and seen only as an excuseThese frames are often used in combination to explain that minorities are no longer subjected to the racism of the past and that racism is no longer an issue in American society essay_13.zip essay_14.zip racial_attitudes_or_racial_ideology.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Journal of Political Ideologies (2003), 8(1), 63–82 Racial attitudes or racial ideology? An alternative paradigm for examining actors’ racial views EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA Department of Sociology, Texas A & M University, 311 Academic Building, College Station, TX 77843-4351, USA ABSTRACT Most analysts of racism in the United States rely on surveys to make sense of actors’ racial views and are oriented by methodological individualism. In contrast, a minority of scholars study actors’ views as part of a racial ideology expressing their collective group interests. Nevertheless, these latter analysts have not developed a conceptual apparatus that can guide other researchers. My task in this article then is advancing a formal conceptualization of racial ideology and operationalizing it to facilitate using it in research. Using data from the 1998 Detroit Area Study, I illustrate the elements of this paradigm. In the explication of the various components of this paradigm, I discuss the central features of contemporary racial ideology in the Unites States which I label ‘colour blind racism’. I conclude with a short discussion of the implications of this paradigm and of colour blind racism. Ideas, to repeat a commonplace, do not exist in a vacuum. They are expressions of social forces, and explanations or rationalizations of observed phenomena. Iclus A. Newby1 From the premier work of Theodore Adorno and Gordon Allport, mainstream social analysts have relied on surveys as the chief instrument for assessing actors’ racial attitudes. The conceptual framework that orients most of their work is rather simple: prejudice → attitudes → discrimination.2 However, the most salient element missing in their conceptual scheme is an analysis of power dynamics: that is, these researchers do not connect racial beliefs to a system of racial domination. Although Allport, unlike many of his contemporary followers, attempted to explain prejudicial attitudes as the product of multiple forces, his analysis was still essentially wedded to methodological individualism and not connected to a system of racial domination. This conceptual limitation has led ISSN 1356-9317 print; ISSN 1469-9613 online/03/010063-20  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1356931032000042966 EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA these researchers to a ‘clinical approach’ on racial attitudes—the search for prejudiced and tolerant individuals in societies. Because of its limitations, traditional survey research underestimates the extent of race-based beliefs among whites in contemporary America. This underestimation results from two related problems. First, because post-civil rights racial dynamics and dilemmas have changed,3 researchers relying on questions developed to measure racial attitudes in the Jim Crow era4 systematically overestimate the level of tolerance among whites. Second, because most surveys provide a limited analytical context—often the somewhat mysterious meaning of check marks on restricted questions and items—researchers assume the meaning of ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ answers in their surveys and the interpretation of their findings is not straightforward. In sharp contrast to survey researchers, most qualitative researchers conceive of ‘racism’ as having a structural foundation. Whether the product of colonized class dynamics, racialized class dynamics, or racial dynamics,5 these authors contend that ‘racism’ has a collective nature and thus affects the consciousness of all actors in any society. Therefore, for these analysts ‘racism’ is not a free-floating ideology but intrinsically connected to the field of racialized social relations. Accordingly, these analysts are more concerned with extracting larger common frames from their data than with attitudinal variation among individuals. Furthermore, whereas most survey researchers rely on ‘yes’ and ‘no’ type of questions to make sense of respondents’ positions on very complex racial matters, qualitative researchers base their research on ethnographies, interviews, discourse analysis, and focus groups which allow them to get a deeper understanding of respondents’ views. Qualitative researchers in the United States have been joined recently by a growing number of survey analysts who, following the central work of Blumer, analyse racial views from a broader perspective.6 Their analysis, which is compatible with the theorization I develop in this article, has uncovered many features of post-civil rights racial ideology. However, because these analysts still depend heavily on survey data, they have not been able to uncover important components of the ideological material used by whites to justify racial inequality. For example, because of the very nature of survey data, these analysts are hard pressed to identify whites’ contemporary racetalk (specific linguistic ways of articulating racial views), specific rationalizations for racial inequality, deep cognitive connections between frames and racial issues, and racial stories (see below). In this article I do three things. First, I make a strong case for shifting the paradigm for examining actors’ racial views from the individualistic framework of the prejudice paradigm to the group-based framework of the racial ideology paradigm. Second, because the racial ideology paradigm has not been properly defined, I propose a conceptual apparatus to explicate how we ought to conceive and study racial ideology. I anchor my theorization on a structural interpretation of ‘racism’ and the work on ideology and discourse of van Dijk and Jackman.7 Third, I illustrate the components and primary social functions of racial ideology 64 RACIAL ATTITUDES OR RACIAL IDEOLOGY? with contemporary examples of ‘colour blind racism’8 from the 1998 Detroit Area Study (DAS henceforth).9 Hence, although my central goal in this paper is theoretical, I also describe the basic features of the dominant racial ideology in the contemporary United States. The racial ideology paradigm defined All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. Karl Marx, Eighth Thesis on Feuerbach10 What social forces are expressed through individuals’ racial views? I contend that individuals’ racial views fundamentally express at the semiotic level the dynamics of real race relations. Although races, as social categories such as class and gender, are socially constructed and thus permanently unstable categories of human identity and action, after they emerge in any society they organize diverse forms of hierarchy that produce social relations of domination and subordination. Thus, as Hanchard has argued, race operates ‘as a shuttle between socially constructed meanings and practices, between subjective and lived, material reality’.11 The engine that makes races—and race relations— socially real is that in ‘racialized social systems’12 the race ascribed the superior position receives economic, political, social, and even psychological (‘I may be poor, but at least I am not black’) advantages while the race—or races—ascribed the inferior position receives disadvantages. Not surprisingly, these groups become social collectivities with different interests: the dominant race tends to defend, justify, or accept the racial order, whereas the other race, or races, attempt to change their position through various means. Based on the preceding arguments, I suggest that a more fruitful approach for examining actors’ racial views is the notion of racial ideology, or the raciallybased frameworks used by actors to explain and justify (dominant race) or challenge (subordinate race or races) the racial status quo. Although modern societies articulate various forms of hierarchy and, thus, societal ideology encompasses frames from gender, racial, class, and other forms of hierarchical structurations, I focus here on how aspects of the larger ‘ideological ensemble’13 play out in the field of race relations. I label these frameworks ‘racial’ albeit I recognize that many (e.g. the frame of abstract liberalism) are used to justify gender and class inequality. Notwithstanding that all races have the capacity to develop these frameworks, those of the dominant race become the master frameworks upon which all actors ground (for or against) their ideological positions. Why is this the case? Adapting Marx’s argument to situations of racial domination, which some Marxist scholars have suggested can be done,14 explains why the ideas of the dominant race tend to be the dominant ideas. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class 65 EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its domination.15 But what is the foundation of these frameworks? From the ideology paradigm standpoint, these frameworks are rooted in the group-based life conditions and experiences of the races. These frameworks are the social representations16 of the races: that is, the conscious and unconscious sum of ideas, prejudices, and myths that crystallize the victories and defeats of the races regarding how the world is and ought to be organized. According to Jeffrey Prager,17 these frameworks embody the cultural material of ‘dead generations’ and operate as ‘public world-view[s], capable of being articulated, collectively arrived at, negotiated, and systematically organized through public channels’. Despite the fact that the dominant racial ideology crystallizes the interests of the dominant race, that ideology is not fixed but highly interactive. The flexibility of the dominant racial ideology enhances its legitimizing role because it allows for accommodation of contradictions, exceptions, and new information. As Jackman points out, ‘Indeed, the strength of an ideology lies in its loosejointed, flexible application. An ideology is a political instrument, not an exercise in personal logic: consistency is rigidity, the only pragmatic effect of which is to box oneself in’.18 The interactivity of the dominant racial ideology stems from divisions between segments within the dominant race as well as from debates between the races. For instance, white élites, because of their special location in the complex matrix of domination typical of modern societies, exert an inordinate influence on the ideas of white masses. However, it is a mistake to interpret whites’ racial views as the direct effect of the ideological work of white élites. Poor and middle-class whites are not passive repositories of some ‘objective interests’ or supra-consciousness that tells them what to believe, say, feel, or do when in the presence of racial minorities. Instead, the white masses have some real agency, that is, they participate in the construction, development, and transformation of racial ideology since, after all, it is in their racial interest to maintain white supremacy. Although élites attempt to sell their particular racial projects19 to the masses, the masses themselves are agents in the production and refinement of these projects. For example, although the present racial crisis in the United States is partly the result of how neo-conservatives, the Far Right, the Reagan Revolution, Clinton’s neo-liberal policies, and more recently, George Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ have played out in a context of economic decline, the efforts of these groups have worked through the long-standing racial divisions in America. When white workers express views such as ‘They don’t want to work, because if they did, there wouldn’t be so many of them selling drugs and getting in all kinds of problems’,20 they are not just repeating élite views but expressing their race-based resentment toward minorities based on their own experiences. Indeed, élite segments of racial 66 RACIAL ATTITUDES OR RACIAL IDEOLOGY? groups are in strategically advantageous positions for influencing the ‘public’, but their views and projects are not ‘simply imposed, inculcated, or otherwise passively adopted by the public’.21 The agency of the white masses also implies that individual members of the dominant race can become ‘ideological dissidents’ or ‘race traitors’.22 For example, intellectual, moral, or political concerns have led many individual whites to challenge racial inequality throughout history. Yet, the William Lloyd Garrisons and John Browns (whites who struggled for the abolition of slavery) have always been a minority since committing racial treason involves going against your collective interests. In practice, members of the subordinate race(s) are more likely to commit racial treason since individuals who do so can improve their standing (e.g. in the post-civil rights era, anti-minority individuals such as Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas, and Linda Chavez are handsomely compensated). The interactivity of the dominant racial ideology also evinces the process of ‘racial contestation’23 between the races at all levels. Although as I stated above, the ideas of the dominant race tend to be the dominant ideas in society, ideological rule over the subordinate race(s) is never absolute, is always at best partial, and is always contested. For example, if the United States has a new set of dominant racial frames (see Table 1 below), it is because struggles in the past (civil rights movements, race-based rebellions in ghettos, etc.) led to a change in the ‘racial structure’—the specific social, political, and economic practices and social arrangements that help reproduce racial domination. However, the new, post-civil rights racial ideology incorporated many of the ideas endorsed by racial minorities in the ‘sixties (equality of opportunity for all, eradication of racist statements as illegitimate in public discourse, censorship of racist views on the supposed biological-moral character of blacks, etc.) but in a hegemonic way, that is, by including them in a manner that does not threaten white supremacy. To facilitate using the racial ideology paradigm in research, I propose conceiving racial ideology as an interpretative repertoire24 consisting of the following three elements: frames, style or racetalk, and racial stories. Individual actors employ these elements as ‘building blocks … for manufacturing versions on actions, self, and social structures’ in communicative situations. The looseness of the elements allows users to manoeuvre various contexts (e.g. responding to a race-related survey, discussing racial issues with family, or arguing about affirmative action in a college classroom) and produce various accounts and presentations of self (e.g. appearing ambivalent, tolerant, or strong-minded). Although individual members of races may exhibit considerable rhetorical, stylistic, and even affective variations, analysts can determine whether they are breaking with the dominant repertoire, that is, if they are relying on a different ideology altogether. The first and most important element of an interpretive repertoire is its frames or topics central to the maintenance (or challenge) of a racial order. Although many frames have a long and deep history—e.g. racially-based fear of the ‘Other’, association of blackness with criminality, etc.—most are directly related 67 EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA to the specific needs associated with the reproduction of a particular racial order. These frames embody ‘folk theories’ that individuals use to explain race-related matters. For example, during the Jim Crow era, the ideology of the colour line, in contrast to the ideology of slavery which emphasized blacks’ sub-humanity and natural servility, focused on keeping blacks ‘in their place’. The civil rights rebellion, in conjunction with other social, economic, and demographic changes that transpired in the 1960s, dramatically altered the nature of America’s racial structure. No longer do blacks and other minorities face the indignities of having to sit at the back of the bus or of confronting signs stating ‘No blacks and Mexicans allowed’. Nevertheless, the death of Jim Crow has not meant the death of white supremacy. Instead, as several analysts have argued, a ‘new racism’ has replaced the old racial structure.25 In contemporary America racial privilege is reproduced in a mostly covert, institutional, and apparently non-racial manner that does not depend on overt expressions of hostility. For example, whereas blacks and Latinos were excluded through housing covenants and racial terror from certain neighbourhoods in the past, today racial exclusion is accomplished through steering by ‘realtors’, not advertising units, and unequal access to loans. Similarly, whereas racial privilege in the economic realm was maintained by reserving the good jobs for whites and by paying minorities less than whites when they worked in the same jobs, today the economic shackles are reproduced through strategies such as testing which is not relevant to job performance, advertising of jobs in factories where racial minorities have little representation, and by racializing jobs even at the top of the occupational structure.26 Accordingly, post-civil rights racial ideology reflects the character of the new racial order. Instead of relying on an in-your-face set of beliefs (‘Minorities are behind us because they are stupid or biologically inferior’), the new ideology is as indirect, slippery, and apparently non-racial as the new ways of maintaining racial privilege. I label this new ideology colour blind racism and argue that it is centrally anchored in the abstract extension of egalitarian values to racial minorities and the notion that racial minorities are culturally rather than biologically deficient. I summarize the central frames of colour blind racism in Table 1. Below I describe two of the frames of colour blind racism (abstract liberalism and naturalization) and provide examples of how whites use them. The most important frame of colour blind racism is abstract liberalism. When minorities were slaves, contract laborers, or ‘braceros’ (Mexicans brought as agricultural workers), the principles of liberalism and humanism were not extended to them. Today whites extend the ideas associated with liberalism to minorities, but in an abstract way that rationalizes racially unfair situations. Because of the curious way in which liberalism’s principles are used in the post-civil rights era, other analysts label modern racial ideology ‘laissez-faire racism’ or ‘competitive racism’ or argue that modern racism is essentially a combination of the ‘American Creed’ with anti-black resentment.27 The importance of this frame is evident in that whites use it on a host of issues ranging from affirmative action and interracial friendship and marriage to neighbourhood and 68 RACIAL ATTITUDES OR RACIAL IDEOLOGY? Table 1. Central frames of colour blind racism (1) Abstract liberalism: This frame incorporates tenets associated with political (e.g., ‘equal opportunity’, the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy, etc.) and economic (e.g., choice and individualism) liberalism in an abstract and decontextu ... Purchase answer to see full attachment